Contradictory Unity
Categories
Sculpture
Collaborators
Solo Project
Material
Fibre Glass
Keywords
Identity Contradiction Body Fragment Art History Assemblage Reconstruction
Year
2016
The work began with an interest in how identity can be constructed through incompatibility rather than resemblance. Instead of creating a complete figure from a single visual logic, I wanted to assemble a body from fragments that did not naturally belong together, allowing contradiction itself to become the condition of form.
The work began with an interest in how identity can be constructed through incompatibility rather than resemblance. Instead of creating a complete figure from a single visual logic, I wanted to assemble a body from fragments that did not naturally belong together, allowing contradiction itself to become the condition of form.
The sculpture combines the legs taken from Manet’s The Picnic with body elements derived from Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. These fragments carry different historical contexts, pictorial intentions, and cultural associations. Once detached from their original images and brought into a single sculptural body, they no longer function as quotations alone; instead, they begin to negotiate with one another, forming a figure that is neither fully harmonious nor entirely broken apart.
The sculpture combines the legs taken from Manet’s The Picnic with body elements derived from Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. These fragments carry different historical contexts, pictorial intentions, and cultural associations. Once detached from their original images and brought into a single sculptural body, they no longer function as quotations alone; instead, they begin to negotiate with one another, forming a figure that is neither fully harmonious nor entirely broken apart.
Contradictory Unity proposes that individual identity may emerge through internal tension rather than consistency. The work treats the body as a site of reconstruction, where conflict is not something to be resolved entirely, but something that gives the figure its particular presence. In this sense, the sculpture is less about completing an ideal whole, and more about holding together the unstable conditions through which a self can appear.
Contradictory Unity proposes that individual identity may emerge through internal tension rather than consistency. The work treats the body as a site of reconstruction, where conflict is not something to be resolved entirely, but something that gives the figure its particular presence. In this sense, the sculpture is less about completing an ideal whole, and more about holding together the unstable conditions through which a self can appear.
